Final Restructuring Community Meeting January 13, 2009 WHRC 6:00PM

Pontiac school board to vote on restructuring plans, closing schools

Friday, January 2, 2009 11:50 AM EST
By DIANA DILLABER MURRAYOf The Oakland Press

The Pontiac Board of Education plans to vote Monday on whether to create a system with one high school and a few elementaries or a single high school with both elementaries and middle schools.

Their decision Monday will also determine how many schools the district will keep open in the fall.However, Board President Damon Dorkins said trustees will not determine which schools will remain open until they vote on the final restructuring plan on Jan. 26.

Two options have been recommended by the Pontiac Redesign Committee for Instructional Effectiveness and Financial Efficiency that has worked for several weeks on the project.

Both options would feature a single high school made up of combined student populations of Pontiac Northern and Pontiac Central high schools — 2,460 — located at Northern. And both include keeping Frost school as a preschool academy and Kennedy School for special education programs.Most likely to be closed under either option are Central, Bethune, Crofoot, Franklin, Longfellow and Whitmer Human Resource Center.

The advisory committee’s goal is to come up with a structure that will be more efficient for the district, which has declined from 20,000 to only 6,700 K-12 students. It also is designed to help eliminate a $10 million projected deficit and improve instructional programs.

Option One, which seemed to be most popular with the board, would keep open two middle schools and seven elementaries. It would be similar to the existing system with kindergarten through sixth-graders in elementaries, seventh through ninth-graders in middle schools and 10th through 12th-graders in high school.Schools recommended for this configuration are Northern; Madison and Jefferson/Whittier middle schools; and Herrington, Rogers, LeBaron, Emerson, Owen, Alcott and Whitman elementary schools.

Closed under Option One would be Central High School, Bethune School (with alternative high school moved to another location), Lincoln Middle School, and Crofoot, Franklin, Longfellow, and Whitmer Human Resource Center elementaries.

Option Two, which would close more schools, would feature one high school for ninth through 12th-graders and five kindergarten through eighthgrade elementary schools.

Under that option, the district would keep open Northern, all three middle schools and only four elementary schools.It would incorporate combined middle and elementary schools of Jefferson/Whittier and Lincoln/Whitman; Madison Middle School; and Herrington and Rogers elementary schools.Closed would be Central High School, Bethune School (with alternative high school located elsewhere); and Alcott, Crofoot, Emerson, Franklin, LeBaron, Longfellow, Owen, and Whitmer Human Resource Center elementaries.

Vice President Gill Garrett has proposed an option of his own.

Garrett would move all seventh and eighth graders into Madison Middle School, which has a capacity of 1,180 and is on the same campus as Northern. He would move elementary students from Crofoot, Longfellow, Franklin and Whitmer Human Resource Center to the Jefferson Middle School/ Whittier Elementary campus. In this scenario, Lincoln Middle school would be closed.

Before the board approves a total restructuring plan that names schools to remain open and defines instructional features to be included, two additional meetings will be held.

The first is the fourth and final public forum at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 13, at Whitmer Human Resource Center in the city-school complex off Auburn Road and Woodward northbound.

The second meeting at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 15, will be a board study session. Besides reviewing information gathered at the public forum, trustees have asked administrators to provide more in-depth data about capital outlay per pupil, energy cost per pupil, building capacity, feasibility, necessity for improvements, and density of student population around each building.Some trustees said the data provided the advisory committee for their recommendations are from two different sources that do not agree.

In addition, the board wants to consider the geographical impact of the schools closed before their final vote.